Proven Leadership

Carlton has a proven record of conservative leadership and a well established history of addressing the needs and concerns of the citizens he represented. Known as the “thorn in the side of Mayor Julian Castro's liberal agenda” Carlton would not back down from a fight when a fight was necessary. That said, he also worked with his colleagues on nonpartisan issues critical to the needs of the people of San Antonio. To this day Carlton's initiatives still benefit San Antonio.

taxes and rate increases

Carlton was the taxpayers and ratepayers champion on City Council. He pushed back hard and voted against the never ending SAWS and CPS increases, arguing that these entities needed to match each dollar of an increase with a dollar of cost cutting. He identified $40 Million of potential savings at SAWS alone, and exposed the bloated salaries and bonuses in our city owned utilities. Carlton consistently argued for reducing the property tax rate to provide relief from soaring housing values, and fought wasteful “legacy” projects that diverted tax dollars from basic city services.

transportation

Carlton led the effort at City Hall and on the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) to kill the controversial $500 million streetcar proposal that would have consumed much needed roadway dollars, and he has worked to keep our highways toll free. He was the driving force in an effort to secure $25 million in federal funding to improve mobility into Brooke Army Medical Center and Fort Sam Houston and he secured funding for much needed improvements along Harry Wurzbach, which is a main artery to Fort Sam Houston and our National Cemetery.

ETHICS & TRANSPAReNCY

As a San Antonio City Councilman, Carlton worked in a bipartisan fashion with the Mayor and his Council colleagues to greatly strengthen the ethics ordinance relating to issues of disclosure, conflict of interest, and contracting transparency. He has been a consistent watchdog for the public and a supporter of the independent Ethics Review Committee. When he discovered city officials were preventing embarrassing cases from being brought to the committee, he went public with his findings, resulting in changes that will ensure complaints against high ranking officials are no longer swept under the rug.

District 10 Senior Center

In 2012, Carlton made good on a campaign commitment by securing $10 million in bond funding to provide a new state of the art Senior Center for the residents of District 10 and citizens across Northeast San Antonio. The District 10 Senior Center benefits all seniors in Northeast San Antonio, providing them with meals, activities, and critical services. Carlton's vision for the Senior Center is now the model for future centers being built across the city.

City of San Antonio, Charter Amendment on Council Vacancies

Upset that vacant council seats were being filled by Mayor Castro and his allies, and not by the voters of the affected district, Carlton set out to change the system. He drew up new rules for filling vacancies, got unanimous support from his colleagues, and successfully saw the measure to conclusion with a voter approved change in the City Charter.

Today San Antonio’s City Charter is aligned with state statute, and if a council person leaves office in all but the last nine months of their term, their vacancy is filled by a special election in the district. Thanks to Carlton's leadership the basic right to choose your own representative was restored to the citizens of San Antonio.

Northeast corridor revitalization Initiative

During his first term in office, Carlton Soules was determined to address the deterioration occurring along the four-mile stretch of Perrin Beitel and Nacogdoches Roads. Drawing from his experience with the successful Austin Highway Revitalization Project, Carlton oversaw and launched the Northeast Corridor Revitalization Initiative.

This multi year undertaking is successfully revitalizing this commercial corridor by developing goals, committing resources, and bringing stakeholders from the area into the process. Today, execution of Carlton's vision is being led by the NEC steering committee, composed of representatives from the neighborhoods, the local business community, San Antonio City Council, and the City of San Antonio's Department of Planning and Community Development.

Veteran Owned Small Business Program

The City of San Antonio, maintains a Small Business Economic Development Advocacy Program (SBEDA) to actively promote greater availability and contract participation by small, minority, and women, business enterprises within prime and subcontracting opportunities. As Military City, USA, Carlton believed we needed to honor honor the contributions of our veterans by extending the opportunities available in the city's SBEDA program to veterans as well. To that end, Carlton directed the city to develop a Veteran-Owned Small Business Program (VOSB) in order to promote participation of our veterans in city contracting opportunities. On January 15, 2014, thanks to Carlton's leadership, the city established the VOSB program and became the first in the State of Texas to grant a preference to veteran-owned small businesses for the types of procurements where application of such a preference is allowed for municipalities.

PArk safety zones

Carlton is a strong advocate for our parks and for the safety of the public who enjoy them, especially where children are concerned.That is why he developed and received unanimous support from the mayor and city council to create Park Safety Zones around the city’s park system. Under Carlton's leadership, city council made it illegal for any person required to register on the Sex Offender Database to knowingly be present in any city park. Additionally, these individuals are prohibited to loiter or establish a permanent or temporary residence within one thousand (1,000) feet of a city park.

bulky waste drop off centers

Do you remember a time when street easements and vacant lots were filled with illegally dumped couches, mattress’s, or piles of old carpet? That no longer is the case, and the reason is Carlton's efforts to create free drop off sites for bulky waste. Carlton and his team studied the issue and found that high dollar dump fees and difficulty getting to landfills were a key cause of the illegal dumping. Additionally the city was spending a fortune tracking and sending crews out to pick up the illegally dumped trash.

Carlton found the answer by first advocating for and successfully bringing to reality four strategically located free dump stations (non-commercial) for the residents of San Antonio. We now have a cleaner San Antonio and the city is saving resources and tax dollars.